Right and Left React to the Alabama Senate Candidacy of Roy Moore

The political news cycle is fast, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Trying to find differing perspectives worth your time is even harder. That’s why we have scoured the internet for political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen.

“If your vote is the whole of your efforts, you simply can’t afford the luxury of a complicated election cycle. That’s a garbage game plan — and nobody’s fault but ours.”

Ms. McCain, who begins her column enumerating her “pro-life credentials,” argues that even the staunchest of abortion foes should withhold their support for Roy S. Moore, the Republican candidate for the Alabama Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general. She frames her argument in “a parlance we all understand in Alabama — football,” explaining that “for pro-life Christians in Alabama, this situation is tantamount to being 4th-and-2 on the 50-yard line.” Read more »

“Thus we have the ‘Moore Paradox’: If he refuses to quit the race, the best way for Republicans to get rid of Roy Moore requires voting for him.”

For Republicans who think the accusations against Mr. Moore are disqualifying, Mr. Schneider has a novel proposal: Vote for Mr. Moore and hope that a two-thirds majority of the Senate chooses to expel him. You would need only 19 Republican senators to oust him from the seat, Mr. Schneider explains. That would allow Alabama’s Republican governor to appoint a different Republican to the seat and conservatives wouldn’t lose any power in the Senate. Read more »

“Although a substantive case can be made for supporting Moore, the right thing is to withdraw support for his candidacy and send a resounding message to the nation.”

Mr. Ashford admits that the “Roy Moore situation is a sticky wicket.” He weighs the relative costs and benefits of voting for the Republican candidate, writing that while Mr. Moore has not been convicted in a trail of sexual misconduct, “Americans do not have the luxury of waiting for a trial before the election is held.” Given the information available now, Mr. Ashford argues, somewhat tentatively, that conservatives must “embrace and act on the conviction that personal character matters for public office.” Read more »

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From the Left

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Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Alabama at a campaign stop in Birmingham on Monday.CreditJay Reeves/Associated Press

“Tuesday’s election has little to do with the bodies of little girls […] It is about white supremacy. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

Mr. Harriot is skeptical of what some pundits and Moore supporters have called “Alabama values.” These “values,” he writes, “selected as their winner every single presidential candidate who ever ran on a platform of segregation or white supremacy.” These values, this election is proving, aren’t about protecting children from predators, but rather, are about what they’ve always been about: “white supremacy.” Read more »

“If the Party is willing to give its money and its credibility to protect a candidate accused of molesting teen-agers, what might it talk itself into doing to protect the president? Robert Mueller may be interested in the answer.”

According to Ms. Sorkin, we can understand what is happening in the Alabama election through the prism of Donald J. Trump’s election. Mr. Trump — with the help of people like Mr. Moore — has managed to damage the reputation of the Republican Party in his short tenure so radically that the party may not survive the blow. Read more »

“For all the attention heaped on black voters, whether Doug Jones can win will depend on whether white Alabamans cross a line that’s as much racial as it is partisan.”

Many columnists will remind their readers that tight races like the one in Alabama often come down to turnout — in this case, black voter turnout. Mr. Bouie outlines the state’s history of black voter suppression and explains why, in this case, Mr. Jones has to rely on white voters to win the seat. Read more »

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Finally, From the Center

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Supporters of Roy S. Moore before a campaign rally in Midland City, Ala., on Monday.CreditJonathan Bachman/Reuters

“We urge you not to be fooled into believing this is a matter of ‘liberal’ vs. ‘conservative.’”

The editorial board of AL.com takes a cue from Alabama’s senior senator, Richard C. Shelby. Mr. Shelby told CNN on Sunday that he would write in the name of another Republican rather than vote for Mr. Moore. The editors at AL.com note that “for a state’s senior senator to not support his party’s nominee for the other seat is almost unheard of.” Moreover, they argue that despite the president’s public statements, Mr. Jones isn’t particularly liberal. He “has campaigned hard on his intent to try to work across party lines,” they write, noting that it is unlikely that Mr. Moore will value bipartisanship should he win the seat. Read more »

“I still think Moore is favored, although not by much; Jones’s chances are probably somewhere in the same ballpark as Trump’s were of winning the Electoral College last November (about 30 percent).”

On Monday, some polls showed Mr. Jones up nearly 10 points in his race against Mr. Moore. Other polls showed the exact opposite. So who are we to believe? Mr. Silver breaks down why the predictive data is so all over the place in this election, and explains the assumptions and practices that may lead two different but equally respected pollsters to reach opposite conclusions about the results of Tuesday’s special election. Read more »